This is the time of the year when GM goes out and does an audit on all the stores in Georgetown. He walks up and down all the streets and notes whether a store is still open, or if it closed, or if the space is still vacant, etc. And while there was a whole lot of activity in 2011, both on the openings and closings side, it turned out to be a net negative year for the neighborhood. GM will have a long post slicing and dicing the numbers next week, but here’s a preview.

In 2011, GM counted 530 stores in Georgetown. (For the purposes of this exercise, a “store” is a shop, restaurant, salon, etc. Basically any commercial establishment except purely office space). This year the total tally is 509. And the reduction of 21 stores is probably slightly worse than it sounds because every year GM adds some more shops to his list that he overlooked in previous years. In fact GM counted 96 closings and 40 openings, which would suggest a net loss of 56 stores, or 10.5%. It’s worth noting that the closings were highly concentrated in the mall.

One more stat GM will throw out there: there are 117 vacant shop spaces in Georgetown right now. Many are already spoken for (even if GM knows a shop is going to open in a space, just for consistency’s sake he counts it as vacant) but most are not. So opportunity knocks for you aspiring shopkeepers out there!